Ovation: The UConn Kappa Kappa Gamma Sisters Will Bacon Haze No More.

05/08/2014

Hazing on college campuses can be a harmless tradition or it can be a dangerous, sometimes deadly, process by which young people acclimate themselves into their new university surroundings. Away from home and unsupervised … many for the first time … the often teen-aged students find themselves participating in activities normally reserved specifically for adults. Unfortunately, the excessive drinking of alcoholic beverages is usually involved.

While most of the stories in the news regarding hazing on university campuses involve fraternities and the young men who live in their designated residences, the dangerous rituals are not practices only by fraternities. One sorority in particular, the Kappa Kappa Gammas at University of Connecticut, has been stripped of its recognition as a student organization, prohibited from operating on the UConn campus and will lose its campus housing until 2017 in what is being referred to as “bacon hazing”.

“Based on the information presented, there is a preponderance of evidence to show that members of Kappa Kappa Gamma engaged in hazing behaviors including but not limited to forced consumption of alcohol, acting like animals, and sizzling like bacon, which included lying on the floor and wiggling. These behaviors occurred during an event in which Kappa Kappa Gamma sisters received Big Brothers from a Greek fraternity.” – Uconn Associate Director of Student Affairs, Joseph Briody, in a letter to Kappa Kappa Gamma Sorority.

The sorority, along with fraternity Sigma Alpha Epsilon, had been temporarily suspended in March when sophomore Hillary Holt was allegedly forced into a night of heavy drinking that resulted in her blacking out and waking in a hospital bed with a blood alcohol level that reached nearly three times over 0.08, the legal limit to drive.

It seems to me like women on college campuses have been participating in these binge drinking parties for decades but have only recently started to be held accountable for the results. I commend the university’s administration for sending the message that hazing will not be tolerated on the UConn campus.

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Bacon? That is a first for me. My fraternity brothers just made us wash all their cars and go through the blackballing ritual, which is pretty lame in my opinion. I actually was working in my upper class years, so I had an excuse not to participate.

I remember having to collect signatures from the active members in these silly books that we made out of wood there were quite heavy to tote around all the time. Nobody ever made us drink anything back then.

Drinking was not required, it just was omnipresent. The blackballing part was cruel where they kicked everyone out and then went back to them and told them they could stay. I wanted my car keys so I could go home, but that was part of the drill.

I agree. While it may be a young person’s first taste of independence, it’s also their first opportunity to display signs of maturity and make first impressions as an adult. With the advent of social media, young people today don’t have the luxury of leaving their past in the past to the degree that we enjoyed … another reason to act responsibly.

Imagine “Googling” your mother and finding pictures of her wriggling like bacon at a frat house party. I’d wager this never crossed the minds of the Kappa Kappa Gammas that night.

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